• Tag Archives Action RPG
  • Rebel Galaxy

    Calling Rebel Galaxy an RPG is stretching things a bit. There aren’t any skills to progress in, and dialog choices amount to some minor plotline options (whether you want to side with the militia or pirates, whether you want to help someone or just blow them up) and the ability to threaten or capitulate to pirates instead of fighting them.

    Let’s get the bad out of the way first:

    • All the systems are identical, with the only differences being what level of equipment you can purchase and which aliens may show up.
    • Progression is hilariously broken. Level 5/6 equipment (6 is max) and the best ships are available essentially as soon as you leave the first system.
    • All enemies fight pretty much the same way.
    • Mission-specific enemies often just pop into existence out of nowhere.
    • There’s not much in the way of ship customization; weapon, armor, and engine options are all pretty limited and there’s no cosmetic customization at all.
    • Faction differences are minor bordering on non-existent.
    • Mining is a complete waste of time (would be better if what the pulse detects could be customized).

    That’s a lot of bad, so what’s good about it? Um… well… it’s kind of fun to just unload rapid fire cannon blasts into the sides of dreadnaughts and watch them explode. And there’s something viscerally satisfying about running blockades and buying low/selling high to make a few million credits with basically no effort (buying salt for 2k-8k and selling it one system over for 30-40k is surprising entertaining).

    Some things to know if you plan to play this:

    • Upgrade your shields before anything else.
    • The Cargo Scanner module that marks which ships are carrying something will save you a ton of time hunting for alien weaponry.
    • The ‘system average’ column on the trading screen is the average price across all systems.
    • The Merchant Guild is the easiest way by far to make money and sells the best cargo modules.
    • The Mercenary Guild missions can send you against any other faction (you never know which until you get to the location).
    • Becoming neutral with the Red Devils gives you access to Aegis Shields, Smuggler’s Holds, and a couple ships including the Mercenary Guild’s Minotaur.

  • Titan Quest AE: Post-Normal

    With Tyranny just around the corner, and most of the characters I made in Titan Quest having completed Normal difficulty, it seems it’s time for a progress update. I’ll list the characters in the order I beat Hades with them (with one exception).

    The Oracle ended up preforming much as expected. Most enemies ended up quickly cut down by a flood of Ternion blasts before they could do anything. It’s a bit of a glass cannon though and doesn’t do too well against close-quarter AOE attacks (I died a bunch against Cerberus due to non-existent poison resistance). Lightning Bolt is also a really good skill and I think I may try to max it as a back-up attack.

    The Templar actually ended up being the weakest character for much of the game. It wasn’t until Act IV that the combination of high defenses and high enemy damage resulted in opponents killing themselves in droves, before that point it was a real slog. I wouldn’t suggest trying this sort of build unless you’re prepared for a tedious and somewhat frustrating early game.

    Next is a character made mainly based on wanting to use the Spell Breaker skill, although having someone who could use +Cold equipment was another consideration. Enter the Sage. Spell Breaker is curious. Most skills in this game either start good and stay good, start off good and become lackluster, or are just plain lackluster for a particular build. This one however, initially unimpressive, ends up fantastic when maxed out in Acts III & IV. Tiger Elites? Dragonmen hordes? Demon elites? All instantly either wrecked or rendered effectively harmless. The only real weakness here is a lack of crowd control; Scatter Shot just doesn’t cut it in a non-Bleed build. I may have to try out Freezing Blast or Squall.

    Here is a good time to point out that TitanCalc, the site I’ve been linking to for character builds, uses outdated skill descriptions; quite a number have been buffed/nerfed/changed since that was last updated. Scatter Shot for example no longer does a ton of piercing damage, it does a little piercing with a bunch of Bleeding. Some other notables included Earth’s Volatility increasing physical and burning damage in addition to fire, Dream’s Premonition being a flat increase instead a percentile, Rogue’s Lucky Hit having a 44% change to trigger, Warfare’s Onslaught granting ~half the damage bonus, and Spirit’s Circle of Power now increases Bleed/Vitality/Leech damage and casting speed while decreasing energy cost and recharge rate.

    Getting back to the characters we come to the Harbinger, which is practically the best of all worlds. Tons of speed (Weapon Training, Ardor, Temporal Flux), tons of physical damage (Dual Wielding, Onslaught, Battle Standard), and tons of elemental damage (Temporal Rift). Give it two ‘of Reckless Power’ axes/maces enhanced with some +speed Anubis’ Wrath glyphs and watch it decimate everything in its path. The only notable weakness is a lack of Stun resistance, so make sure to keep an eye out for gear that enhances that.

    Less impressive is the Warlock. Constructs and spectral Undead are the Warlock’s bane, and there are quite a number of the latter in the game. Disarm Traps more or less solves the Construct issue with its hefty damage bonus, but even with Spirit Ward/Bane Undead are still a problem (Deathchill, sensibly enough, turns out to be almost completely ineffective in this area). Lethal Strike certainly destroys them, but that’s only single target. It’s a conundrum. Maybe the elemental damage from maxing out the Lich’s Arcane Blast would be effective?

    After the previous character I really needed to play one that didn’t have an issue with Undead. Enter the Summoner. With summon-enhancing +Elemental gear the Wolves and Nymph (set to ‘aggressive’), along with support from Volcanic Orb and Eruption, just ripped through them. Ripped through most things actually. The Core Dweller was less impressive, and spent most of the game set to ‘normal’ acting as something of a bodyguard to waylay any creatures that bypassed the Wolves. The character basically plays like a siege engine; you stand back and launch Orbs/Eruptions at enemies while your army of summons engage them. The main weakness of the build would have to be enemies that use un-dodgeable AOE attacks; those tend to wreck the Wolves… who obviously won’t physically move out of the way.

    I made the Dreamkiller specifically to have a character that could benefit from Poison-focused gear. Sadly, it doesn’t really play differently enough from the earlier characters (e.g. Warlock, Templar) to grab my attention. So far I’ve left it sitting at the start of Act II Normal since it’s a real pain to kill spectral Undead (immune as they are to poison and the character build not yet having access to Temporal Rift)… which is mostly my fault for trying to max out early skills before unlocking the full Mastery trees. I may respec it a bit and transfer the points from Phantom Strike into advancing toward Rift.

    Lastly we have the previously mentioned Diviner, who I’ve heavily re-specced to focus on Vitality damage. I decide to play through Epic with this character first after all and they ripped things up surprisingly well in Act I. Temporal Rift is insanely powerful and, combined with Trance of Wrath, easily handles the Undead/Constructs that are otherwise immune to Deathchill and the damage type I decided to focus on. The only thing I’ll say about Epic at this point is that it’s a lot like Normal, the main exceptions being: Enemies take longer to die, your base resistances take a huge hit, there’s a new class of equipment, summoned creatures become quite tough, and there are some new boss monsters scattered about.

    I guess I’ll close this with some notes about Normal difficulty:

    • Don’t worry about dying. The XP penalty is small and easily recovered.
    • The difficulty spikes at points. Most notably: The Athens’ Catacombs boss, the start of Act III, the Act III boss, and the Demon archers in Act IV.
    • Note that the area where you fight the Act III boss includes one of each Shrine variety.
    • Life/Energy Leech isn’t very good, since the creature has to stay alive for you to actually leech anything.
    • All Undead and Constructs are completely immune to Life Leech, Bleed/Vitality Damage, and Convert Damage to Health effects. Constructs and spectral Undead are also immune to Poison damage.
    • Expected levels at the end of each Act, assuming no farming/grinding, are: 18-19, 27, 32-33, & 39-40.
    • Don’t try to complete equipment sets with a single character. After going through the game with all the above characters, I’ve only managed to complete three of them (Templar, Fragile/Frail, and Obsidian).
    • While at first blue gear will seem the best, keep a lookout for green gear. Since it can be enhanced with creature parts or glyphs it often ends up far better for specific builds.
    • Summoned creatures aren’t updated in real-time, you have to re-summon them if you want them to use abilities gained from skills you just unlocked.

  • Heretic Kingdoms, Nox, & Titan Quest

    So, taking a break from Titan Quest, I decided to give the first Heretic Kingdoms game another shot. Loading up my save from just after leaving the opening temple area, I immediately entered Dreamform and explored the new map… finding nothing but ~4 Hex marks (which grant attribute points) and a ghost that gave a quest. This seemed a bit strange, so I left Dreamform and found myself being attacked by a lizardman in short order. The starting wand did 1 damage a hit to it, and it had ~25 life, while each of its hits took off about 15% of my health bar.

    I only just barely defeated it. Then three more showed up and promptly killed me as I was trying to see if attacking with a halberd would be more effective (it didn’t seem like it). Deciding there that the game is quite clearly much more like the first Baldur’s Gate than Diablo, requiring some serious effort to understand its mechanics (What attributes should be raised? What early-game tactics are effective? Etc.), I decided to go try a different game for the time being.

    Enter Nox, which I grabbed some time ago during some sale or other. This game is far easier to grasp and pretty forgiving of wandering into areas unprepared, at least as the class I started out trying (Conjurer). It’s somewhere in-between an RPG and an action RPG, with a somewhat odd control scheme. In most games like this left-click is move/interact, moving you to whatever you may be trying to interact with if you aren’t already near it. Here it’s just interact. You have to right click to move in the direction of your cursor, as though the mouse were simulating WASD (which are used as spell hotkeys), and can only interact with stuff you’re next to. It feels off. The humor too feels off, and the combination made me put it down after getting killed by some bandits I honestly shouldn’t have been engaging.

    So back to Titan Quest it was. In addition to my first character, who’s at the very start of Epic (in Sparta at the moment), I made a few more characters:

    A lightning-spam Oracle (Spirit/Storm) who’s now in Thebes, a soon-to-be Harbinger (Warfare/Dream) who’s just reached Athens, a soon-to-be pierce/bleed Warlock (Rogue/Spirit) who’s at Delphi, and have plans to start a reflection-death Templar (Dream/Defense) and some sort of class focused on summons (Nature/Earth? Nature/Spirit? Unsure). All three of the existing characters are doing much better than my first, partly thanks to a tighter focus and partly a result of the much larger equipment pool (I have yet to really find any gear tailored to a Diviner), and each play rather differently. So having to repeatedly clear the same areas doesn’t end up as boring as I thought it would be; it certainly helps that there’s such a wide variety of equipment drops (though I seem to be getting an inordinate amount of INT-focused gear).

    The Oracle is vaporizing enemies with Ternion, the proto-Harbinger is mincing them with Battle Standard, and the proto-Warlock is doing hit & runs and/or insta-gibbing with Lethal Strike. The first two will only get more powerful in the near future, but I’m a little worried about the Warlock. Automatons and Undead are both resistant/immune to pierce/bleed, so I see some tough going ahead unless I try to rush Deathchill/Necrosis… which will likely cause some severe Energy-related problems.


  • Titan Quest Anniversary Edition

    Have you ever played Diablo II? Titan Quest Anniversary Edition is basically that with a more varied skill system, a few quality of life improvements (base health/mana regen, infinite portals, keep equipment on death, no item durability, easy respec), and no random maps.

    The maps are quite linear, the sidequests amount to killing/finding things, and the dialog and storyline are both very simple. If you don’t enjoy wandering around viciously murdering hordes of enemies while constantly picking up shiny new equipment there won’t really be any reason to play this game. On the plus side you pretty much never have to backtrack through a previously cleared location (there are 2-3 exceptions in Act IV, added by the Immortal Throne expansion).

    My first playthrough was with a Diviner (Mind/Spirit) who focused mainly on ranged attacks, Psionic Immolation (which killed nearly every non-boss in one hit once maxed out), and the Lich summon. At the end of Normal they were at level 40 and ready to start maxing out Lich and Temporal Rift (which turns out is even nastier than PI) in Epic.

    Despite not being optimized in the slightest and not doing any real grinding, for the most part I didn’t have any trouble getting through to the end. Hades’ third form did kill me something like 6 times though because Immolation kept missing his floating body and his life drain wave did tons of damage. However, before going into Epic with this character I think I’m going to run through Normal/Epic with a lightning-spam Oracle (Spirit/Storm, which apparently isn’t very gear dependent) so that I can find better Diviner-focused equipment, as I suspect it won’t do too well in Epic just using whatever.


  • Heretic Kingdoms – The Inquisition & Hand of Fate

    I have not played much of Heretic Kingdoms – The Inquisition (originally titled Kult: Heretic Kingdoms), just the opening Monastery map. Basically it struck me as Diablo with much fewer character building options. Allegedly there’s more to it than basic Action RPG mechanics, and hopefully that’s true because without Diablo‘s skill system the combat looks like it will get real old real fast.

    The reason I stopped playing the above so quickly was because Hand of Fate grabbed my attention. This game is not quite like anything I’ve played before; it’s half board game (composed of cards you collect and build decks from) and half arena-hack&slash. While the combat is for the most part fairly simple (enemies basically attack you one at a time, you can dodge/counter/attack), it’s also remarkably well detailed and the arenas are nicely varied. The board/card game part is the real draw though, where you get to travel a series of paths made out of encounter cards pulled randomly from a deck you build beforehand while managing various resources and the protagonist’s equipment. Most encounters provide a choice and can result in combat, a pick-a-card minigame, or resource trading/acquisition. Traveling the randomly generated paths is interesting enough on its own, but combined with the unlocking mechanic (where landing on one card will unlock another related card if you meet certain requirements) it becomes quite addicting.

    At the moment I’ve defeated the King of Dust and have unlocked all possible cards at this point except the Merchant Guard Fate’s (while the Iron Hunger cards can theoretically be unlocked at this point, I don’t think it’s likely in practice). Something I realized very late, shortly after defeating the King of Dust, is that you should replay each story point until all available cards are unlocked before moving on. This is because as you progress your deck size gets larger, making it less likely you’ll draw the card(s) you need to unlock the further you progress. It was a real pain unlocking chains like Blood Auction/Charity and the various Fate’s cards halfway through the story… although this turned out to be the perfect time to unlock the Lion Prince’s.

    So far my favorite Fates are Shadow Agent (easy pick-a-card segments) and Lion Prince (the health gain mechanic), though Iron Hunger may make the list once I get the hang of building a deck around it. The least fun have been the Nomad (sketchy start), Monk (no gold gain is a real pain), and Apprentice (easy mode is really easy). Quest-wise the Kraken chain stands out for its set-piece end battle (killing the lizards is a trap), The White Minotaur stands out for the insane number of pick-a-card segments you have to win, Decent Into Hell stands out for the unexpected requirements of the second-to-last card (a high-damage weapon and at least three rings in your inventory) along with its rather unfair final battle, and The White Council stands out for how anticlimactic it ends.

    Starting out I suggest unlocking the various Fate’s cards (most added by the Wildcards expansion), particularly Apprentice to teach you the basics of combat, Soldier to give you practice building combos, and the first two Warlord cards to unlock a fantastic helm and solid artifact card. Then play with the Shadow Agent Fate for a bit until you get the hang of how the pick-a-card minigame works (it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the card shuffling wasn’t random). After that point just try out each of the Fates until you unlock all their cards to figure out which ones are the most enjoyable for you. Note though that Shadow Agent can’t be fully unlocked until after the Jack of Skulls, Nomad until after the King of Dust, and Warlord/Monk until after the King of Skulls. Also, while theoretically possible earlier, to unlock the Lion Prince & Iron Hunger cards you’ll probably want to wait until after defeating the King of Dust (Lion Prince) and Jack of Scales (Iron Hunger).


  • Dragon’s Dogma

    I first played the demo for this game way back when it first came out for PS3. I didn’t get very far at the time because the controller keybinds were awful (all of them). Now that it’s finally been released for PC, and has almost-fully customizable keybinds, I picked it back up.

    At the moment I’m at the Wrym Hunt part of the main quest with most sidequests completed (working on the last Bandit one and holding off on Search Party), and somewhere around 34th level. So far it reminds me of Witcher 3 (the open world, the RPG elements, the primary/secondary weapons) crossed with a bit of Assassin’s Creed (the running/jumping/climbing on rooftops/ledges, that ‘find the medallions’ DLC content).

    The class variety is nice, and being able to switch around nearly at-will and share certain abilities between them reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s unfortunate though that Pawns don’t have access to all 9 of them. I’ve mostly been playing as Strider/Warrior so far (to get certain Augments, while leveling as Assassin). The idea was to end up with Assassin, but I’ve been kind of annoyed by that class’ seeming lack of Magical Damage options and so may go with a dagger-focused Mystic Archer instead.

    Mage/Sorcerer honestly doesn’t seem like much fun to play so my pawn has been filling that role. Warrior, which I’ve sort of been ‘forced’ to play, also doesn’t feel very fun: The attacks are slow and it has a very one-trick-pony vibe to it. Fighter, Strider, and Assassin are pretty fun though; a mix of blitzing small creatures and climbing around on big creatures to stab them in the face (the pommel smash while climbing is the real deal-killer for Warrior) while using the bow against flyers or as a preemptive attack. Mystic Archer and Ranger are presumably similar, though heavier on the archery, while I have no idea what Mystic Warrior is like at all.

    Difficulty hasn’t been much of an issue. I wouldn’t say it’s all that different from Witcher 3‘s system, but the limited fast-travel options are a bit of a pain. Being able to zip back and forth between the main hub, Bitterblack, and the starting town is nice… but that still leaves huge swathes of territory to the north and west full of annoyances to repeatedly plow through. Once I’ve cleared an area I don’t really like being forced to re-clear it. I hear that’s not an issue in NG+ since you can buy new portable and re-usable Port Crystals, but I’m obviously not in NG+ right now and have only found two in the game world (in that cave with the old Arisen on the hillside and in Everfall).

    It’s definitely been fun up to this point, but I have the nagging sensation that it’s going to start feeling repetitious very shortly. Some brief notes:

    • Don’t sell anything other than Sour Beast-Steaks (let regular steaks sit in your inventory for a day or two).
    • Save everything else in the Inn’s storage because you never know when a quest or weapon/armor upgrade will need something.
    • The best way to quickly gain Class ranks is to kill low-experience (100 or less) creatures. Goblins and passive wildlife are both nice and plentiful.
    • You can go to Bitterblack Isle to change your class as soon as you get your main Pawn.
    • The first 100 levels provide the highest stat gains on level-up.
    • Check around for sidequests before advancing the main quest, as some of them are time-sensitive.
    • Avoid the optional Escort quests until you’ve both found the location they mention and have a portable Port Crystal to place there ahead of time.
    • Related to the above: There are actually multiple Healing Spring locations.

  • Gaming Update

    I posted these elsewhere, starting way back on July 23, but may as well cross-post here for consolidation purposes and ease-of-access:

     


     

    Just started playing Ys Chronicles in preparation for watching Minna Atsumare! Falcom Gakuen. It was cheap on GOG a while back so I thought “Why not?”.

    Looks very good. Very modern, quite Anime. We’ll see how the gameplay is.

     


     

    Ys Chronicles‘ gameplay is a little tricky. Having to run into the enemy at just the right angle is kind of a pain. Normal map monsters seem to be weak enough that this isn’t really much of an issue, but boss fights (based on the one boss I’ve encountered so far) appear to be bullshit.

    The boss itself wasn’t very strong, but the area you have to fight him in is full of flaming death that’s pretty much impossible to avoid if you want to hit him. So the fight basically boiled down to hoping my attacks would kill him before the flames killed me (since healing is limited while in battle).

    Hopefully most boss fights aren’t like that, as Touhou-like frame-based sprite-dodging is not my forté. The second boss was a lot easier at least; no environmental hazards to worry about.

     


     

    Remaining Ys I Bosses: The vampire is incredibly annoying, the mantis is a pushover, the molten rock thing is a pain, the twin heads start out hard but quickly become simple, and the final boss is bullet hell incarnate. 30 or so minutes of thumb-bruising flailing about to get just the right sequence of hits in.

    That 25-floor tower is also just plain tedious, what with the backtracking and the fact that you’ve almost certainly hit max level before even entering it. At least the floors are small.

    Such relief now that that’s over. On to Ys II.

     


     

    Ys II is far better balanced than the prequel.

    – Normal map enemies are more deadly and stay that way significantly longer, meaning that even with 6 levels on them they can kill you if you’re especially careless.
    – Bosses aren’t particularly annoying and can be beat without having to have excessive twitch-gamer skills.
    – The level cap is much higher and won’t be reached until nearly the very end of the game, and only then with time spent grinding. So killing things never feels useless.
    – The ending credits scroll faster and there’s stuff going on in the background so that watching them no longer seems like a punishment for winning.

    With that duology now out of the way, I think I’m going to move on to Suikoden IV next. Already completed III and V some time ago, but had skipped IV due to some of the criticisms leveled against it (mainly reduced party size & grindy travel). Time to see how accurate those complaints are.

    Update: Protagonist is ugly and the ship controls are awful. Annoying.

     


     

    Finished Suikoden IV. It was… not so great really. Okayish I guess, but rather small/short, annoying with all the random encounters, and the ending is kind of spontaneous.

    Going to try Suikoden Tactics now (which appears to effectively be a storyline sequel to Suikoden IV) before maybe moving on to Phantom Brave.

     


     

    So I’m reading this FAQ covering Suikoden Tactics, and in the introduction it goes on about how this is one of the easier sRPGs to get into. Said it’s easier than Final Fantasy Tactics and less complex than Disgaea.

    Less complex than Disgaea I will give it, but it does not seem to be easier than FFT. There’s tons of enemies on the maps, magic points can’t be recovered in battle and there don’t seem to be any infinite-use active abilities, the equivalent of FFT‘s Job Propositions require certain (hidden) character attribute scores in order to succeed, neither character class nor weapon type can be changed, there’s the constant threat of environmental terrain hazards, and you don’t get immediate access to any re-visitable training maps.

    It gives me a sort of Tactics Ogre vibe really. A less complex Tactics Ogre. And that relative lack of complexity is what actually makes it harder… since you have less methods available to you to accomplish your goals.

     


     

    Suikoden Tactics now finished, it gets quite a bit easier once you get access to the repeatable ‘Hunt Monsters’ maps. You can pretty quickly outlevel the storyline enemies by just doing a couple of those and the “Gather # Items” quests. At that point the lack of variety in the combat abilities really starts to bite, as the vast majority of the characters are interchangeable. The plot developments aren’t anything all that exciting either… though the ending does contain a nice reveal.

    Suikoden Tierkreis is up next, which will complete the franchise (the newer Gensou ones for the PSP have not been translated, and so I’m not counting them).

     


     

    Finished Tierkreis a bit earlier today. It’s surprisingly robust for being on a handheld, and fits in with the other Suikoden games well (bad voice acting and all). The difficulty level is pretty low overall, though things got a bit dicey with the final boss when it decided to use its ultimate attack 3 times in a row.

    Not sure what’s going to be next. Possibly Titan Quest, but I just grabbed Heroes of Might and Magic IIIV plus Chronicles from the GOG Ubisoft sale a little while ago and so may go with them instead. Of those four I’ve only played V before, long ago when it first came out, but abandoned it on the final level (which was unnecessarily complex).

     


     

    Decided to go with neither and play through the Quest for Glory series (which was picked up at the GOG summer sale) instead. Had only played/completed the 5th installment before.

     


     

    QfG 1-3 complete, but ended up stalled starting 4. Why? Because of the Might and Magic Humble Bundle, which included a starter set for Duel of Champions (which is sort of like a more restrictive Magic: the Gathering Online). Played it quite a bit back in the day and had around 3000 cards before losing interest. Now there are 4 completely new sets and tons of new achievements to unlock (achievements grant free in-game money, cards, and packs) so I’m getting back into it.

    Referral link for that is: JKAYGA.